


Reminder

by zarabithia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 12:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: Keith’s had his share of nightmares, of course. That helps him know what to do when it's Shiro's turn to have them.





	Reminder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt of: "How do you think Keith would handle Shiro waking up from a PTSD nightmare?"

Keith’s had his share of nightmares, of course.

(The worst of them, he’d woken up alone. Because during the worst of them, he’d been living with a universe that tried to tell him Shiro was dead.)

He knows that, though the galaxy has been unkind to him, it has heaped even more cruelty upon the man lying in bed next to him. So - although it breaks his heart - he is not surprised to be startled out of his sleep by the restless sounds of Shiro having what sounds like a pretty severe nightmare.

Keith sits up and looks down at Shiro, still lost in the horrors of whatever dream is keeping him awake. There isn’t any sound coming from him - not yet - but the body is restless, tossing, turning, gripping the sheets. His face is contorted into a frown that looks like it is on the verge of crying out.

Keith pauses for only a moment, hesitant only as he considers what Shiro would want. Shiro … Shiro never wants to feel weak. There are, Keith knows because he has listened to stories and filled in gaps Shiro isn’t bitter enough to share himself, plenty of people in Shiro’s past who used their closeness with Shiro as an excuse to try to protect him. Keith has to not hate those people, because it was their fundamental misunderstanding of who Shiro was that allowed Shiro to recognize the need to prove himself that Keith had had, back when they’d first met.

Keith tries so hard never to be that to Shiro.

So he doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t shake Shiro awake, and he doesn’t throw his entire body into saving Shiro from a dream Keith doesn’t know the details of.

Instead, he stays in place and calls out to Shiro, softly at first, then louder, when that doesn’t work. His voice reaches through to Shiro and pulls him back, in the same way that Keith had desperately wished someone could have done for all of his nightmares.

But he’d experience very single one of his nightmares all over again, if it could make Shiro’s nightmares go away. He’d experience them every night for the rest of his life.

As Keith’s voice reaches through and offers Shiro a way back to reality and away from the horrors that he is imagining, Shiro blinks up at him. Both arms start to move, and the look of freshly realized horror that washes over Shiro’s face when he sees the artificial arm is neither unexpected nor new.

“Keith,” Shiro eventually says.

It’s a simple welcoming, but one that grounds Shiro enough to help him sit up. Keith scoots out of the way enough to give his massive boyfriend room to sit up. He leaves some room between them.

In those moments after waking up, people getting too close can be too much. Keith’s seen movies that tell him otherwise. He’s heard stories about Lance and Hunk’s nieces and nephews that tell him otherwise.

But crowding can make it worse for Keith, and in that regard, Keith and Shiro are alike.

“Want to talk about it?” Keith asks.

Shiro shakes his head, over and over, but he speaks anyway. If Keith believed it to be an oblilgation, he’d stop him. But it’s less of an obligation adn more of an inabiilty to keep it in, when the person he trusts most is next to him.

“I left,” Shiro says finally, and each word looks like it cuts into Shiro’s chest with a blade of marmora.

The regret and obligation are heavy in his words, and Keith doesn'tk now what he is talking about. There are so many instances in which Shiro has … misplaced regret. Being captain of the Atlas is very … apt.

“You did what you had to do,” Keith says, because in every one one of those instances, it’s true.

Shiro shakes his head. “I should have… I should have helped them.”

Ah, then. It’s the prisoners, and Shiro’s immeasurable guilt about leaving them behind. Keith tries to feel guilty about the fact that Shiro hadn’t lingered. If he had, even for a moment, Shiro might not have made it back.

“You did your duty and came back to us,” Keith says quietly. "If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found you that day in the desert, and there never would have been a Voltron. A lot more people would have died at Zarkon’s hand, Shiro.“

It’s not something that Shiro believes right now. Later, the good pilot and super star student of the Garrison that is still within him will take over and mull that information over, and he’ll believe it. Later, Capain Shirogane will believe in Keith’s logic.

But for now, all he does is reach his hand over and offer it to Keith. It closes the gap between them, and gives Keith permission to do the same.

And so, Keith takes his hand and squeezes the metal reminder of all that Shiro has survived as tightly as he can.


End file.
